Session 3 HEIs as Organisations: Organisational Analysis and Change in the African HE Sector

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Session 3HEIs as Organisations Organisational
Analysis and Change in the African HE Sector
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HEIs as Organizations Organizational Analysis
and Change in African HEIs

• In this session we will
• Recap via feedback ideas on gender and change in
  home institutions
• Explore some basic tenets of organizational
  analysis and approaches to change and the value
  of institutional culture approach in
• developing deeper organizational analysis and
  effective change strategies
• Divide into 4 groups for practical exercise in
  application (10.00-12.00)
• Report back
• Conclude the session
• Lunch at 13.00hrs

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HE institutions do change

• .changing and being changed by social and
  political forces local, national, regional and
  international forces and people.
• effect change in people and in the institution
• External - contribute to and interact with
  social, institutional and political change beyond
  the campus
• Internal - change and are changed by various
  communities who pass through them, drawn from
  rapidly changing social and political contexts
• -Ongoing student turnover, each intake different
  from the year before
• -staff profile, brain drain, staffing
  development policies intervene in effort to
  sustain/change institution

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HEIs as Organisations

• Organisational management theory has evolved
  since the beginning of the 20th century.
• Organisational theory produced by
• managers and industrialists
• military institutions
• public administration experts
• organizational development experts and
  consultants
• social and behavioural scientists
• policy makers
• social and political interest groups and
  movements

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Organisational development theory 1970s -1990s

• Not specific to challenges facing HEIs, or HEIs
  in Africa, but do impact on management and
  change within them via consultants, internal
  experts who import and use ideas from elsewhere
  e.g
• origins of strategic planning techniques in
  attempts to manage and direct rapidly changing
  corporate environments and institute planned
  change
• HE Reforms derive from good governance
  responses to crises and international responses
  tp crisis of African states
• Emphasis on rationalisation, efficiency,
  administrative and financial management
• Less emphasis on intellectual and curriculum
  aspects of HEIs
• Emphasis on individual performance and measurable
  aspects of output
• Less on collaborative and collegial culture,
  contribution to community spirit

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Organizational development theory

• Culture of excellence model appears via centres
  of excellence external performance indicators
  rather than lived work/study experience of
  members of institution
• gender theory of organisations late 1970s
  onwards deepens understanding of organisational
  processes, cultural reproduction/change of
  identities and social relations as well as
  institutional dynamics and processes

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Institutional culture approaches

• 1990s onwards, draw on state of the art
  organisational theory and practice and have
  potential to
• Attend to all aspects of inequality gender,
  sexuality, class, religion, ethnicity, race and
  nationality
• Enable deep and sustained change,
• Address both formal and informal aspects of
  organisational functioning.
• Address all levels micro (indiv psych)-meso
  (instit procedures)- macro (institutional,
  systemic)

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How does change occur in your institution?

• External forces and influences?
• Internal forces and influences?

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Understanding change

• Most change unplanned
• Political crisis
• Economic crisis
• Global policy shifts
• National legal and policy developments
• Staff demands
• Student demands and unrest of various kinds
• etc

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Organisational development and change management

• Most institutional change good or bad - is
  unplanned, sporadic, spontaneous, the product of
  often unforeseen contextual and climatic
  developments.

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Approaches to change and change management may be

• reactive
• - Precipitated administrative attempts to capture
  and control change, bring order to chaos, prevent
  anarchy maintain stability
• proactive
• - Well informed pre-emptive, planned to develop
  and advance the institution, to stay ahead of the
  game and forestall reactive action

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Change strategies require political will backed
up with

• tools and techniques, structures, capacities and
  resources
• strategic planning techniques
• policy interventions
• consultative committees, advisory committees and
  working groups
• educational and training strategies
• change consultants (local or imported?)

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Backed up with

• in-house staffing resources and capacities
• deep knowledge of the institution in the area of
  intervention
• dedicated institutional structures or desks

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Designing effective interventions

• Attention to
• 1. Nationally-specific legal and policy
  frameworks
• 2. Institutionally-specific approach to policy
• 3. Institutional culture prevailing norms,
  power relations and understandings of status and
  hierarchy, values, assumptions, common practices
  all of which are gendered, prescribe normative
  codes for masculinity and femininity and
  react to deviation from these

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Steps in intervention

• 1. Set up a structure tasked with developing
  policy
• 2. Background work and enquiry, investigation to
  define the problem, its extent across the
  institution, and the conditions creating it
  accurately
• 3. Draft text of policy and set out targets
• 4. Design of implementation strategies,
  communication, educational and/or disciplinary
  measures to support policy
• 5.Set up policy monitoring, reporting and
  evaluation system, periodic policy reviews
• 6.Mobilise resources for sustaining policy

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Scenario 1 National policy demands gender
equality in academic profile

• Scenario 1 National policy demands gender
  equality in academic profile
• The new Minister of Education means business and
  what is more, she has the full support of the
  Head of State. No sooner had she taken office
  when she summoned the leaders of all higher
  education institutions across the nation to a
  meeting. She instructed that the new national
  policy would demand that institutions address the
  problem of persisting inequality evident in the
  profile of academic staff in every one of the
  nations HEIs. This she said was not a source of
  national pride, and flew in the face of the fact
  that constitutional commitment to gender equality
  had been in place for many years. Student
  enrolment profiles had changed, but the fall off
  among faculty was as bad as it had ever been,
  especially at higher levels. She further observed
  that institutions had a legal responsibility to
  redress this problem. In this light, those
  institutions failing to record positive change
  within 5 years would be the subject of review,
  and would face budgetary sanctions as her
  Ministry would be obliged to redirect a component
  of the HE budget into programmes designed to
  ensure the change required by the national
  policy.
• The institutional leader has returned and called
  all senior management to a meeting which you have
  just attended, at which he conveyed this policy
  imperative. You have convened into a Special
  Working Group representing various stakeholders,
  tasked with developing an effective intervention
  strategy and action plan to address the low
  representation of women in senior academic
  positions. The plan is required to yield results
  within the coming 5 years.

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• www.feministafrica.org
• Issues 8 9 (forthcoming in 2007)
• Rethinking Africas Universities
• Full text will be available at the web site
• African Gender Institute publications contact
  via University of Cape Town website or
• email request to agi_at_uct.ac.za
• Sexual Violence/Sexual Harassment A Handbook of
  Resources (J.Bennett)
• Killing a Virus with Stones institutional
  case studies on implementation of SH policies (J.
  Bennett et al )

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Scenario 1 National policy demands gender
equality in academic profile

• Your working group is required to
• Discuss and share knowledge on the extent of the
  problem in your institution
• -what do you find in terms of a) the numerical
  profile and b) aspects of the institutional
  culture that might be sustaining this profile (
  e.g push out factors, performance and promotion
  patterns and the conditions sustaining these,
  prevalence of sexual harassment, gendered impact
  of student poverty).
• Develop a comprehensive interventions strategy
  that will address these institutional cultural
  dynamics and change the profile effectively.
• Report on the extent of the problem and possible
  factors sustaining it, and detail the main
  elements of the comprehensive policy and
  educational measures that you recommend on the
  basis of your analysis of the existing scenario.

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Scenario 2 Sexual corruption, harassment and
violence bring a campus into disrepute

• Scenario 2 Sexual corruption, harassment and
  violence bring a campus into disrepute
• The Leadership of your institution has called you
  to an urgent meeting. You are informed that the
  widespread practice of sexual corruption and
  abuse on the campus has long been brought to the
  attention of the leadership by both student and
  staff representatives, and now something had to
  be done about the problem. Recently there has
  been a campaign of leakages to the press, that
  have resulted in extensive media coverage
  alleging multiple cases of abuse and harassment
  of women students, and this was bringing the
  institution into disrepute. One particular
  incident had been particularly awkward, as it led
  to the VC/Rector being summoned by the Minister
  of Education. The case in the spotlight involved
  a young relative of the Minister of Justice, a
  promising student known as Ms Felicia who had
  been severely assaulted by unknown assailants on
  the campus grounds. The nature of her injuries
  and her hospitalisation led to a criminal police
  investigation, during which she had alleged that
  she had been regularly subjected to unwanted
  sexual advances by a senior faculty member, Prof
  Jiminson. She alleged that his flirtation had
  damaged her reputation, and led her boyfriend, a
  popular student leader, to dump her in a public
  display of contempt. When questioned Prof
  Jiminson pleaded that Ms Felicia, had been
  infatuated with him for a long time, that he had
  succumbed and they had dated for a short time. He
  claimed that her allegations against him were
  false, made because she was aggrieved when he
  tried to end the relationship after learning that
  she was dating fellow students. He claimed that
  on the evening in question they had been on a
  final date that included a visit to his office,
  but this had ended badly and they had quarrelled.
  According to his account she had become
  aggressive and hysterical, and then run off
  into the night, in some disarray, after which he
  knew nothing further until he was called in for
  questioning. Professor Jiminson called on his
  wife to confirm that Ms Felicia had tempted her
  husband, which she did, observing that this was
  a common occurrence among the promiscuous and
  lazy girls of today.
• In order to appease the Minister of Justice and
  reduce the damaging effects of this highly
  publicised case, the leadership is convening a
  Working Committee tasked with developing a
  comprehensive investigation into sexual relations
  and practices on the campus, and on this basis to
  develop policy recommendations on the matter of
  sexual relations between staff and faculty. The
  recommendations are required to include a
  communications strategy to salvage the
  universitys reputation, an educational strategy
  to address the problem and a set of disciplinary
  measures that will reduce the prevalence of
  sexual harassment and corruption on the campus.

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Scenario 2 Sexual corruption, harassment and
violence bring a campus into disrepute

• Working Committee to discuss and report back on
• the actual situation in your institution
• the key elements that an effective policy would
  address
• the implementation and monitoring plan
• the main elements (incl messages) of an
  immediate communications strategy that would
  form part of your institutional intervention and
  attempt to salvage the institutions reputation.

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Concluding moments

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Revisiting of ObjectivesObjective 1.

• To deepen our knowledge of the national and
  regional conditions under which African
  Universities have pursued their visions, and
  developed institutional and intellectual
  cultures.
• Via historical reflection and discussion,
  attention to specific contexts and institutional
  diversity

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Objective 2.

• To deepen our understandings of universities as
  complex, multilayered and gendered organizations
  shaped by formal and informal processes through
  which various stakeholders and groups sustain the
  institution, its values and practices.
• Via Collaborative discussion and reflection and
  sharing institutional histories experience and
  cultures
• Collective engagement and debate over this
  gender business resistance to perceived
  imposition and its relation to core business

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Objective 3.

• To strengthen our capacities as effective change
  agents, equipped to lead and manage institutional
  change, and versed in strategies for ending
  gender inequality
• Deepened knowledge of our changing HEIs in
  changing global and local contexts
• - via discussions and reflection on
  participating institutions
• - via practical application and discussion of
  strategies

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Summing up

• We found
• lots of assumptions, v. little analysis of
  African institutional cultures, local gender
  cultures, and minimal attention to institutional
  gender dynamics
• Incorrect to assume that inequality only about
  access
• Incorrect to assume inequality caused by external
  factors there are many internal factors and
  dynamics reproducing inequality inside
• Incorrect to assume that women drop out just
  because of social psychological factors that
  have nothing to do with our institutions
• Institutions are not in fact neutral,
  gender-less fair and equitable
• Need to attend to institutional cultures of HEIs
  
• Need to attend to possibility of push-out factors
  - institutional change requires that we address
  institutional dynamics

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Summing up

• We found
• Universities are deeply gendered in all aspects
  of their institutional culture
• Universities tend to reproduce gender inequality
  in society instead of challenging it, thus
  failing to honor policies and renege on social
  responsibilities
• Strategies that aim to increase access are
  necessary but insufficient C-est ne pas
  suffit
• Reform efforts need to take account of gender
  dynamics lest they exacerbate inequality and
  exclusion and set back the modest gains of the
  last 30 years.

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• We found
• Negative effect on students has wide
  implications for the wider society, for
  fulfilment of political and policy commitments
  both in terms of labour force and national
  development, political development,
• Negative effects on developing more inclusive
  notions of citizenship on and off campus

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To concludeto change is to know

• Institutional change strategies need to be
  responsive and to address deeper institutional
  and cultural dynamics of gender in all aspects of
  their institutional functioning and social
  relations
• Gender research and analysis should underpin
  gender advocacy and change efforts in every
  national and institutional context, to inform and
  sustain change efforts in and beyond the campus
  so we so we can do justice to the national and
  regional legal and policy advances and
  commitments to gender equality and justice in the
  African region.